1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing system, a portable terminal, an information processing apparatus, and a display method. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image processing system, a portable terminal, an information processing apparatus, and a display method, in which information related to maintenance of an image processing apparatus is processed.
2. Description of the Related Art
In office environments and the like, a plurality of image forming apparatuses (for example, copiers, printers, MFPs (Multi-Functional Peripherals), and the like) are often used in a certain extent. The kinds of these apparatuses often vary.
A serviceman visits a customer site with such a usage pattern to perform maintenance of a plurality of image forming apparatuses. Then, the serviceman decides the order of maintenance among a plurality of image forming apparatuses and performs maintenance in the decided order.
However, in the case where various kinds of image forming apparatuses are installed at the customer's site as described above, it may be difficult to check a status of each image forming apparatus and determine the maintenance order based on the proper priority. In particular, it is difficult to grasp the respective statuses of image forming apparatuses at the customer site that the serviceman visits for the first time. Therefore, the serviceman can determine the optimum order of priority only after collecting information in detail from the customer. As a result, the downtime of the image forming apparatuses as a whole at the customer site is increased, and the customer's convenience is impaired.
To cope with such a problem, for example, a method disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-287501 can be adopted. The publication above discloses a system in which image forming apparatuses used in a customer environment are grouped, the degree of urgency to be supported is determined for each group, and notification of the determination result is provided to a predetermined destination.
A mechanism such as remote diagnosis using a network may be used.
However, in some cases, one image forming apparatus requires different kinds of maintenance, or maintenance is concurrently performed on a plurality of image forming apparatuses. The method disclosed in the publication above cannot make a flexible determination in such cases.
In the case where a mechanism such as remote diagnosis using a network is used, network connection at a customer site is sometimes not permitted for the sake of security. In such a case, this mechanism cannot be used. Moreover, in this case, the serviceman has to carry a large-scale system, which is difficult to operate in terms of workload and cost.